


borrowing time

by mathonwys



Series: i'm looking at you through the glass [2]
Category: The Yogscast
Genre: Discussion of Death, F/M, Flux Buddies, Mild Gore, Nonbinary Character, Other, Trans Character, Yoglabs, cyborg lalna, medical cw, medication abuse implied???, needles (mentioned briefly), references to lalnable, respawn and lack thereof
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-02
Updated: 2015-06-02
Packaged: 2018-04-02 11:13:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4057882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mathonwys/pseuds/mathonwys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Maybe the fact that she was used to death should've been a little worrying. She was, though. People died all the time. Sometimes they even got back up and shook it off. She'd seen Lalna yank arrows of his chest with a plethora of curses and be totally fine afterwards. Sure, it was frightening at first, but Nano adapted. Nano was good at adapting. Still, when she swung a little too eagerly and her brand new manyullyn sword cut straight through Lalna like he was made of tissue paper, she screamed.</i> </p><p>In which Nano makes mistakes and Lalna fixes them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	borrowing time

**Author's Note:**

> hello these are my personal headcanons for how the hell lalna isn't dead  
> (i'll write a companion fic some other time about nano's special brand of respawn)
> 
> takes place sometime in galacticraft? okay i didn't think too hard of it pbbbbbt.  
> nano is nonbinary! originally this was written with her using different pronouns, but i realized i was uncomfortable with that for personal reasons. she's still nb, but she continues using she/her pronouns like she did in the last fic.
> 
> worth noting that this is saved on my computer as "lalna pls.txt"

Maybe the fact that she was used to death should've been a little... **_worrying_**.

She was, though. People died all the time. Sometimes they even got back up and shook it off. She'd seen Lalna yank arrows of his chest with a plethora of curses and be totally fine afterwards. She herself had survived a gigantic explosion by the skin of her teeth, even though all laws of physics deemed that she should be six feet under. Sure, it was frightening at first, but Nano adapted. Nano was good at adapting. You needed to adapt in order to be a good apprentice, after all, and she was clearly the best apprentice there ever was.

Still, when she swung a little too eagerly and her brand new manyullyn sword cut straight through Lalna like he was made of tissue paper, she screamed.

"Oh," Lalna mumbled. "Hoo boy." He slowly sank to his knees and looked down at himself. For someone cut open down the middle with his guts on the verge of spilling out, he was pretty nonchalant about it. In fact, he seemed more concerned about the state of his clothes than anything else. How the hell was he still upright? Nano glanced down at her blood-slicked blade, then looked back up and stared in horror as he pulled his shirt up and swore under his breath. "Damnit, Nano! Now I have to fix those. Do you know how long it took me to calibrate those servos?"

She didn't answer. Under Lalna's shirt was, undeniably, scarred human skin, and what was most definitely blood was dripping onto the floor and darkening his shirt. But, and she could swear by this, humans usually didn't have gleaming metal mixed in with their insides. Unknown mechanisms whirred and snaked under his skin, made visible only by the large gash she'd torn open. Wires dangled out frayed at the edges and tinged red with blood and coolant. Nano couldn't help but stare, transfixed, as Lalna stripped off his labcoat and shirt and staggered over to the crafting bench.

Scars laced his skin like a multitude of constellations. His entire right arm was gone from the elbow down, the criss-crossing network of scar tissue the only sign that it had once been fully intact, and had been replaced by the ever-useful power tool (which was less useful than usual after being half-broken in the spaceship crash). The worst of the damage was on his front; Nano's eyes widened as she took the sight in and realized what exactly she was seeing. This wasn't the first time he'd been cut open. her unfortunate attack had reopened a long-healed wound she hadn't even known about. His breathing was visibly labored, but he seemed... fine. It was impossible, but he was fine. Sliced right down the middle and bleeding out, but... _**fine**._

"You could've tested it out on a pig, you know," Lalna groused. Tiddles meowed in concern and jumped up on a nearby chest as Lalna awkwardly positioned himself on top of the crafting table to get a better look at the damage she'd done. "But _**nooooo**_ , let's stab your mentor, it's not like he's full of delicate machinery or anythi--"

"Can I look?" Nano blurted out. He stopped mid-bitching and looked up at her in surprise. For a moment, she wondered if he'd forgotten she was still here and had just been complaining to thin air.

"Oh, uh, sure." Lalna chuckled nervously. "It's a little gross..."

She was already by his side before he could finish. On the inside, he honestly seemed more machine than man. A soft whirring filled her ears as she rested her head on his chest; LEDs blinked and wires crackled as if to match his heartbeat. It reminded her of the generator upstairs, and suddenly his affinity for machines made a lot more sense to her. "...Did you do this?"

"Yeah." Lalna cooed at Tiddles and, when she didn't approach, rolled his eyes dramatically and reached around for his tools. Nano sighed and plonked the toolbox down next to him with a loud **_thunk_**. He mouthed a "thanks" at her in return and rummaged through it before continuing his train of thought. "Not everyone's immortal, Nano, bless the ones who are. I'm just a guy with a big brain."

"Funny, it always seemed pretty small to me." She grinned a little at Lalna's over-exaggerated cry of displeasure. With how calm he was, it was easy for her to relax and file the situation away as "not dangerous". If Lalna was chipper about it, it couldn't be **_that_ ** bad. "Uh, how long have you been... part robot?"

"Since before I met you!" Lalna prodded around his insides with the tip of a screwdriver and cursed as he missed his mark. Nano winced in sympathy. "Creepers, skellingtons, zombles, explosives, radiation poisoning... All of that's done a number on me, yeah?" He gestured with his free hand. "When I worked at Yoglabs I was given uh, replacement parts, but you can't rely on 'em for everything." Nano opened her mouth to inquire further, but was cut off before she could start. "So when I was fired, I learned pretty quick how to patch myself up."

"And when some things were too broken to patch up," Nano hazarded, "you... replaced them?"

" ** _There_** you go!" Lalna beamed proudly. "We're very squishy, you know. Humans break down all the time. Everything is so... ** _fragile_**. Machines are fragile, too, but you can fix em up and swap in new parts!" Nano watched his hands as he diligently removed the sliced wires and plugged in new ones. His movements were of one who'd done this so many times he could probably do it in his sleep, and a niggling suspicion made Nano wonder if he had. "Like so."

"....Doesn't it hurt?" she reached out as if to touch and Lalna swatted her hand away.

"Yes," he admitted. "It hurts like a bitch. But hey, if it hurts, I'm still alive! It's... when it **_stops_** hurting that I get worried." He gestured towards a white box and Nano obligingly fetched it. Much to her relief, it was a first-aid kit; Lalna dug through it for some more specialized tools while she watched. Something caught her eye, however, and she picked up a small bottle labelled with a familiar brand name. An experimental shake solidified her suspicions: it was almost empty.

"...You're in pain _**all the time**_?" She held up the bottle of painkillers with a sharp gaze. Lalna didn't answer at first. After a drawn-out silence, he rolled his shoulders and leaned back against the stone wall with a sigh.

"Price of immortality, Nano. I'd much rather be alive and in pain than dead." He held out a hand and, after a moment of reluctance, Nano handed the bottle to him. She looked away as he swallowed a small handful of pills and dumped the near-empty bottle back in the kit.

"...And if something breaks that you can't fix?" Her voice cracked a little. He looked up, and she couldn't name the emotions glittering in his eyes. Worry? Concern? Sadness?

"I'm... I'm living on borrowed time anyway." Lalna's voice was unusually soft as he started closing up the open wound. Her eyes followed the movement of the needle, but saw nothing beyond the scene his words were painting in her head. "I'm not like you. I won't just... respawn. I've broken bones, I've almost died God knows how many times, I've seen the light at the end of the tunnel. Some day all of this is gonna rust, or I'll fall in lava and no one'll be there to pull me out, or I'll get my head smashed in and you can't fix _**that**_ with anything. They stopped cloning me--"

Lalna went dead silent.

"...They stopped what?" Nano leaned in to look at his face. All the color had drained from it, and if not for the slow rise and fall of his chest she could've mistaken him for dead then and there. She recognized this behavior clearly enough. This was the same reaction he had whenever he almost let something slip about his past, or when he almost gave too much away, and she wasn't going to let this thread of conversation drop. "They stopped _**what**_ , Lalna?"

"I'm not supposed to tell you this," he mumbled. He closed his eyes and slumped down like all the wind had been taken out of his sails. " _ **God**_ , I'm not supposed to tell you this."

" ** _Lalna_**." Nano put her hands on his chest and immediately pulled back as he hissed in pain. She hovered there awkwardly for a moment before placing them on his shoulders instead. "Don't hide this from me. _**Tell me**_. They stopped _**what**_?"

"...They stopped cloning me," he said after what felt like forever. Nano's eyes widened and she stepped back. _What_? "Yoglabs. It's-- It's standard procedure, all Yoglabs employees have their genome sequenced and a master clone created. I worked there before they had CloneSec set up. I was the test subject for the cloning process; I'd created it in the first place, and no one else was willing to try." Lalna's eyes half-opened and he looked up at Nano with an expression reminiscent of a kicked puppy. "You know what happens when you make copies of copies, Nano? They _**degrade**_. Mutations become more and more obvious. Chemicals in the brain get imbalanced. Memories get misplaced. My clones-- they went _ **insane**_ , if they even survived the process at all."

The scientist hunched over and dropped his head into his hands with a quiet slap. "A lot of people _**died**_ because of me and my mistakes, Nano. Even _**before**_ the Tekkit War. They were _**clones**_ of me, they weren't _**really**_ me, but enough trouble happened that they wiped my genome from the database, even _**after**_ they finally refined it. They were willing to let me die dead if it meant not having another twisted _**monster**_ on their hands again. If I die, it's... it's for good." It was his turn to choke up. " _ **No extra lives**_."

Lalna flinched as something wrapped around his waist, then looked down. Nano had buried her face in his side wordlessly. He'd expected her to hit him, to run, to call him a madman, to accuse him of making it up, but she was silent. Yet, just her presence was comforting to him.

"If you die," Nano mumbled weakly, "I'm going to kill you."

Lalna smiled. "Good luck with that."


End file.
